Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands: Commercial Embroidery and the Fashionable Accessory in Mid- To-Late Qing China

Fashion Theory The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture

ISSN: 1362-704X (Print) 1751-7419 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfft20

Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands: Commercial Embroidery and the Fashionable Accessory in Mid- to-Late Qing China

Rachel Silberstein

To cite this article: Rachel Silberstein (2017) Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands: Commercial Embroidery and the Fashionable Accessory in Mid-to-Late Qing China, Fashion Theory, 21:3, 245-277, DOI: 10.1080/1362704X.2016.1150670 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2016.1150670

Published online: 24 Mar 2016.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 167

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rfft20

Download by: [Wagner College] Date: 10 September 2017, At: 18:06 Fashion Theory, Volume 21, Issue 3, pp. 245–277 DOI: 10.1080/1362704X.2016.1150670 © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands: Commercial Embroidery and the Fashionable Accessory in Mid-to-Late Qing

Rachel Silberstein

Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 China

Rachel Silberstein researches Abstract and teaches Chinese dress, This paper explores how the growth of commercialized textile production fashion and textile history. She received her DPhil in Oriental entwined with fashionable consumption to stimulate new styles in Chinese Studies from the University women’s dress during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Focusing on of Oxford, and is currently a the development of Suzhou’s embroidery industry, the paper demonstrates Visiting Assistant Professor at Rhode Island School of Design. the shift towards the embroidered accessory during this period and dis- [email protected] cusses how production systems delineated the possibilities of fashionable dress. Combining analysis of embroidered objects with vernacular and commercial texts detailing the growth of this industry, the paper considers the impact of commercialization not only upon styles of dress, but also Rachel Silberstein 246

upon the women who wore and produced these fashionable accessories, and in so doing, connected to contemporary cultural trends.

KEYWORDS: Chinese historical fashion, embroidery, commercialization, borders and trimmings

For many centuries, Western thinking held that historical Chinese dress was static, absent of fashion impulse. French academic Gilles Lipovetsky was following a well-trodden path when he asserted that, “in China women’s dress underwent no real transformation between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries” (1994, 19). However, scholarship of recent decades has challenged this claim that Chinese society was so stable and conservative as to lack the desire for change and novelty that enabled the rise of fashion in early modern Europe (Ko 2003; Finnane 2008), and there is now a growing literature on historical Chinese fashion (Chen 2016). De- spite these advances, the topic remains controversial and many questions remain unanswered, in particular regarding the relationship between commercial production and fashionable consumption during the early modern period. How did the commercialization of textile handicrafts impact Qing dynasty (1644‒1911) fashions? What opportunities did the rise of commercially produced articles of clothing and accessories offer women as producers and consumers? This paper explores these questions through an investigation into the embroidery industry of Suzhou, the nineteenth-century fashion center of China. By combining analysis of embroidered objects with vernacular and commercial texts detailing the growth of this industry, I consider the impact of these changes not only upon fashionable styles of dress, but also on the way in which women engaged with fashion during the early modern period.

The Controversiality of Chinese Fashion

Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 Scholarship on issues of historical Chinese fashion has tended to clus- ter around two temporal junctures: the early seventeenth century when the Ming dynasty (1368‒1644) was supplanted by the Qing dynasty (1644‒1911) (Wu 1999; Lin 1999; Dauncey 2003), and the fall of the Qing and early Republic period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Zamperini 2001). There are obvious reasons for this focus: both the beginning and end of the Qing were times of political tumult and social upheaval—transitional contexts of “social uncertainty” in which fashion tends to thrive (Cannon 1998, 25–29). Indeed, aside from Finnane’s important study of Yangzhou fashions (2008, 52–67), researchers have avoided the Qing dynasty itself. Still, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries offered their own kinds of fashion stimulus in the form of socio-economic change: as the so-called “second commercial revolution” of the mid-sixteenth to Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands 247

late eighteenth century played out, a commodity economy developed, stim- ulated by the influx of New World silver, which brought vast numbers of farming households into the market economy. Qing dynasty China was a time of population growth, social mobility, steady urbanization, and the growth of a mercantile class—leading China historian William T. Rowe has suggested that, “by the mid-Qing era it was possibly the most commercialized country in the world” (2009, 122). The mid-to-late Qing period was distinguished not only by the rapid increase in inter-regional sales of cash crops in grain, cotton, and silk, but also a boom in the production of handicraft goods, with the growth of makers and consumers evidenced by the steady formation of markets, shops, and guilds, particularly in the Jiangnan region (around present-day Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou). Commercialization of textile handicrafts is not a topic that has received much attention from dress historians, yet it had important ramifications for fashion. While fashion may be argued to be a social behavior respond- ing to socio-cultural conditions like urbanization, population fluctuations, and the inability or disinclination of authorities to administer sumptuary regulations, its existence is predicated upon what sociologist Joanne Ent- whistle calls “particular relations of production and consumption” in her useful definition of fashion:

It is a system of dress found in societies where social mobility is pos- sible; it has its own particular relations of production and consumption, again found in a particular society; it is characterized by logic of regular and systematic change (Entwhistle 2000, 43–48).

In contrast to the considerable research into the social functions of fashion in early modern Chinese society—the deployment of fashionable dress to challenge social hierarchies and establish notions of modernity—the apparent lack of interest in commerce and production may be argued to have contributed to the degree of imprecision with which the Qing fashion system has been characterized, and the continued dispute over its existence. Those scholars who define fashion as a historical phenomenon and the- Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 ory as specific to early modern Europe have necessarily rejected the possibility of other types of fashion occurring in other types of societies and cultures (Entwhistle 2000). Thus China, along with all other cultures outside of Western Europe between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries, has been classified with one of a number of terms: “anti-fashion,” “folk dress,” “traditional dress,” fixed dress”; systems of dress in which any change is so slow as to be barely perceptible even to the wearers themselves. Finnane’s well-argued critique of this position joined a growing cast of critics of the possessive relationship between early modern Europe and fashion. As she observed, historically the denial of Chinese fashion was founded on the limited viewpoint of eighteenth-century Western visitors to China whose claims contrast vividly with the obvious concern certain sectors of Chinese society expressed as to fashion (Finnane 2008, 19–23). Clearly, it is critical Rachel Silberstein 248

to employ empirical evidence from internal observers rather than the restricted evidence of Western visitors whose interpretation was determined by what Finnane terms “the repository of ways they had of describing what they saw” (2008, 9). But these restricted viewpoints are not just a historical phenomenon, they continue to impact today’s scholarship. For example, a recent survey of literature on fashion in India, Japan, and China utilized secondary studies written by Western curators on the basis of collections of Chinese dress dominated by imperial and official garments (Belfanti 2008). The dominance of such regulated dress forms in these museum studies sub- stantially limits their ability to contribute towards this comparative survey of historical fashion, yet there has been little recognition of the absence of more commercial or vernacular material in the literature, and the degree to which this absence obscures issues of historical fashion in China. Even aside from the question of sources and perspective, there are additional issues. It is problematic to define fashion as a theoretical framework (thus allowing its application to all those contexts fulfilling that framework), yet also to restrict it to a specific society at a specific time and place (Entwhistle 2000, 44, 47–48). Nor do the components used to define fashion offer much clarity. Consider, for example, the problem of distinguishing between “change” and “fashion”—at what point are changes in style rapid enough to constitute an “internal logic of regular and systematic change”? One way of making sense of this debate is to consider how far the contro- versy arises from the pursuit of a dualistic theory: fashion or anti-fashion, modish or fixed dress, modern or traditional dress. Given the range of socio-economic features encompassed within a definition of fashion like Entwhistle’s, arguably it is more productive to conceptualize a continuum between regulated dress and fashionable dress, with various factors, or what Cannon terms “forces or circumstances conducive to fashion” (1998, 26), stimulating a given dress system in the direction of fashion: absence of regulations, population competition, commercialized production, printed dissemination of fashion imagery and information, and so on. This conception of fashion provides a way of making sense of the unique features of the Chinese fashion system. On the one hand, gazetteer writ- Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 ers, contemporary commentators, and novelists deploy terms like shishi zhuang/zhuang (fashionable make-up/attire); shi xing (fashionable); shi yang (lit. look of the moment); xin shi shi (lit. new time style), and xin yang (lit. new style); terms that utilize notions of time, novelty, and curiosity to distinguish a mode of dress associated with urban style-leaders and con- trasted to other regulated and traditional systems of dress.1 Evidently, the terms that Entwhistle suggests to be useful—anti-fashion, traditional dress, etc.—do not accurately capture this discourse. On the other hand, though textual and visual representations of fashion are central components of any fashion system, prior to the twentieth century it remains difficult to iden- tify a form of fashion press, or mass-distributed means by which Chinese men and women gained access to new styles through text and image. This absence raises the key question of what social and marketing structures Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands 249

spread fashion information during the Qing dynasty, and one approach to this issue is to consider the role played by vernacular texts and images like urban “bamboo ballad” rhymes and popular prints (Silberstein 2015). The importance of these genres, quite different to their European counterparts of fashion journals and advertisements, underscores the differing nature of historical Chinese fashion. Conceptualizing fashion as a spectrum enables us to accommodate the similarities and differences of fashion in the historical Chinese context, allowing us to consider what fashion looks like when some stimulating factors are present, and others, most notably in the case of Qing China, capitalist or industrialized production, absent. Much ink has been spilt over how far the mid-to-late Qing was a period of “proto-capitalism” or “sprouts of capitalism,” but this period is perhaps more usefully understood as possessing a commercial economy, in which, as shall be seen, producer brand names and consumer valuations became intrinsic to the consumption of material culture. If Qing society engaged in what economic historians Gary Hamilton and Chi-kong Lai refer to as “consumption without capitalism” (1989), then this history presents an opportunity to explore what kind of fashions were able to develop in such a context. Engaging in this exploration through the framework of fashion theory is desirable for a number of reasons, but perhaps most important is that denying the existence of fashion in early modern China necessitates other explanations of “acculturation” or “random variation,” downplaying the “role of human intention and choice” (Cannon 1998, 24) and denying the active role of cultural consumer that women took in making socio-economic decisions about how they dressed. For historian William H. Sewell Jr., women’s “massive participation in the development of a fashion culture” made them “crucial agents in the growth of capitalism in the eighteenth century” (2010, 118). As shall be seen, the degree to which Qing women could take on these roles as producers and consumers is worthy of investigation. Indeed, fashion provides a way of nuancing the dominant model in Chinese women’s history, which envisions Chinese women as isolated from many of the key trends of the early modern period. Fashion, this paper ar- Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 gues, formed a way for women to connect to contemporary cultural trends emerging from the print shops and theatre stages of fashionable southern Chinese cities like Suzhou and Yangzhou. This paper explores how the growth of commercialized textile production entwined with fashionable consumption to stimulate new styles in women’s dress during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Focusing on Suzhou, the center of fashion during this period; I begin by demonstrating the shift towards the embroidered accessory that began during the nineteenth century, and attribute this to the commercialization of embroidery production during the same period. By exploring the range of consumers potentially served by this industry and the manipulation of object genres and names by workshop-owners and retailers to augment consumer value, I then consider the degree to which embroidered accessories democratized Rachel Silberstein 250

dress consumption during this period. Thirdly, I discuss the structure of the professional embroidery industry in Suzhou and the ways in which the loca- tion of and relationship between producers impacted on the fashions themselves. I conclude by probing the male discourse concerning perhaps the most fashionable and controversial of these modular accessories—the border or trimming—and suggest that these critiques highlight certain impedi- ments that woman had to negotiate in order to consume fashionable dress.

Fashionable Styles

To begin, with Lipovetksy’s claim in mind, let us consider what “real trans- formations” did take place in Chinese women’s dress from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Here I will focus on vernacular visual mediums like popular prints and professional paintings, which better chart shifts in styles than the literati painting that has, until recently, dominated Chinese art history. The erotic album “Intimate Scenes of Leisurely Love” (Yan qin yi qing) (Figure 1) been dated to the mid-Qing period, but in the 12 scenes from an elegant and wealthy Jiangnan estate, the artist has chosen to clothe the characters in earlier styles associated with the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century: the garments are modestly trimmed with narrow vertical bands of decorative damask or brocade leading down from the collar, with an emphasis on refined woven patterns of roundels and floral scrolls.2 Similarly, in the contemporaneous popular print from the northern print center of Yangliuqing, depicting ladies out visiting for Spring festival (Fig- ure 2), though the silhouette has shifted from seventeenth-century styles to the eighteenth-century shorter jackets and vests over layered skirts, the decorative emphasis remains on fabric patterns and contrasts—trimming and borders are still slight and restrained. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century this aesthetic shifted dramatically. Figure 3 shows a mid-to-late Qing popular print of a gentlewoman. The openings and edges of the garment have grown in proportion and importance, in particular the patterned bands at sleeve and Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 collar. The print’s graphic lines give her dress a certain weightlessness, but the nineteenth-century photo of a Shanghai woman (Figure 4), probably a courtesan, communicates more of a sense of the stiffly layered and weight- ed clothing of this period. As long and loosely layered jackets and skirts became more structured, and robes, skirts, and sleeves widened in cut, the emphasis moved away from the ground fabric to creating decorative harmonies and dissonance through borders, sleeves, and collars. Decorative trimming no longer formed a minor note, but rather comprised the fashionability of the entire dress object, as is well evidenced in contemporary novels like Dreams of Wind and Moon, in which the main characters, urban courtesans, wear outfits like this one: Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands 251 Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017

Figure 1 “Fan handle of kingfisher feathers” (Shandi cuiyu) from album, “Intimate Scenes of Leisurely Love” (Yanqin yiqing); 1750‒1800; ink, color, and gold on silk; H 40, W 36.8; Museum of Fine Arts, acc. No. 2002.602.1–12. Rachel Silberstein 252 Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 Figure 2 “Ladies enjoying Spring Outings” (youchun shinü tu), Qianlong period (1736‒1795), Tianjin Yangliuqing bowuguan, after Yangliuqing nianhua, No. 6. After Zhongguo muban nianhua jicheng OR Tianjin shi yishu bowuguan, ed., Yangliuqing nianhua (Beijing, Wenwu chubanshe, 1984), No. 6.

She wore a long, unlined pale blue gown (dagua) with cassia-bud buttons and scalloped edges that had a round collar piece of im- ported crepe silk patterned with flowing clouds and flowers. It had a black satin border with gold couching depicting the flowers of all seasons embroidered in the “three blues” as well as a yellow, green, and lotus pink banner trim, and the “three borders and three pipings” trimming. Over it she wore a green wool sleeveless jacket (beixin) with cassia-bud buttons that was lined with silver-red pink silk. Its white satin round collar piece had a border of black satin Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands 253

Figure 3 “Guifang Jiaozi” (Educating Sons in the Women’s Quarters), mid-to-late Qing, 108 x 62 cm, Xinjiang, Shanxi, after Wang Shucun, Zhongguo minjian nianhua shi tulu (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin meishu chubanshe, 1991), No. 176. Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017

embroidered with dahlias in many colors with gold couching and also a scalloped White Banner trim and the “three pipings.” (Han- shang [1848] 2000, Chap.5, 31–32; translation adapted from Hanan 2009, 37. emphasis added).

As visualized in this description, and the diagram of a popular jacket style shown in Figure 5, the ao—calf-length, cut wide with split sides and straight or bowed sleeves, the key sites of fashion during the nineteenth century— were small, easily purchased and combined components like collars, sleeve bands, and border sets, components I term here “modular accessories.” Rachel Silberstein 254

Figure 4 Photo of Shanghai woman, late nineteenth century, Peabody Essex Museum. Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 Now, for thousands of years Chinese dress had focused attention on these garment openings and edges. These components emphasized the layered aesthetic of Chinese women’s clothing, the manipulation of length, silhouette, and opening: sleeveless waistcoat upon a long robe, knee-length jacket over a long skirt, bordered trousers beneath. But this idea of layered areas of colors, patterns and textures, each set within zones of decoration, reached an extreme in late Qing women’s dress, famous for its hyperbol- ic “eighteen borders and edgings.” The focus on decorative trimming has often been scorned, most wittily in Zhang Ailing’s (1920–1995) assertion that “Chinese fashion designers of old” failed to understand that “a woman is not a Prospect Garden” ([1943] 2003, 452)—a reference to the large and much embellished garden in the renowned eighteenth-century novel Dream of Red Chamber (Hong lou meng). It has also led some to argue Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands 255

Figure 5 Outline sketch of ao jacket highlighting cloud collar (yun jian), sleeve bands (huan xiu), and borders along the side (ce bai) and bottom hem (xia bai), sketch by the author.

that fashion in Chinese dress consisted of only these details—openings, fas- tenings, collars, hemlines, sleeves, splits—rather than the basic silhouette or cut which is often viewed as fairly static (Bao 2004, 192). This is not my intention. I have already noted substantial changes in silhouette: the adorned patterns and stiffly worked shape of the late Qing jacket and skirt possessed a quite different feel to its more unstructured Ming predeces- sors. And though here I focus on modular accessories like collars, borders, Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 sleeve bands, and appliques, these features were combined with certain silhouettes, and varying parameters like sleeve widths, collar heights, and garment lengths to create more general conceptions of Qing women’s fashions (Sun 2008, Chap. 4). It would also be mistaken to particularize late Qing fashion in its emphasis on trimmings and accessories. Mass consumption of fashion in early modern Europe also began with small outlays: objects like handkerchiefs, purses, or the “populuxe” objects like umbrellas, stockings, and fans whose rise in eighteenth-century Paris is charted by Fairchilds (1993). Such items rose not only because of their lower price tags but also their inherent con- sumability, requiring regular replacement. Indeed, though Chinese and Western fashion systems are normally treated as discrete operations, it bears emphasis that borders were playing a very similar function in nine- Rachel Silberstein 256

teenth-century Suzhou as the ribbon of nineteenth-century London, Paris, or Philadelphia. Like the fashionable ribbon of early modern Europe, Chi- nese borders provided an affordable and accessible means to update garments, making a dated garment more of the moment, and to communicate subtle assertions of social status.3 Far more than mere decoration, the accessory in nineteenth-century France has been established as the “primary site for the ideological work of modernity … imperialism, social mobility, authenticity, commodification” (Hiner 2010, 2). This potential caused dis- cord and, as with the fashionable ribbon of early modern Europe, as we shall see, Chinese male commentators frequently criticized female consumers of these objects for their luxurious, money-wasting ways (Breen 1993, 256). Though this paper focuses on embroidery production, it should be emphasized that woven modular accessories were equally important in terms of fashion accessibility. During the late nineteenth century, there was a substantial increase in the commercial production of tabby weave, supple- mentary warp-patterned ribbons used to trim late Qing dress. The 1881 British customs report Silk: Replies from the Commissioner describes production in numerous locations, partly because the production bar was so low—the ribbons required only a fairly simple and fairly cheap loom. As a result of these changes, the border fashion became a wildly popular trend during the late nineteenth century. However, more generally, Qing dynasty styles are marked by a shift towards embroidered patterning, a transition well captured by early Qing Shanghai commentators like Ye Mengzhu (c. seventeenth century) in his observations of changes in women’s dress:

When I was a child, the most beautiful of women’s unregulated clothing that I saw were patterned using kesi silk tapestry or weaving; the collar, sleeve, lapel and belt were trimmed with kid fur and gold. If embroidery [was used] then the colored threads were applied to this so it was coarse and weighty, and [therefore] patterned bro- cades were not lightly used. Later these woven and tapestry patterns were abandoned, and instead embroidery was used to adorn light Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 damasks and gauzes. Embroiderers sought to imitate the style of the ‘Dew Fragrance Garden’ [home of the Gu family embroiderers], using silk threads of dyed hues—it was increasingly exquisite (Ye 1981, 180).

As Ye’s description suggests, it was changes in the commercial production of embroidery that drove this decorative shift. He was struck by the use of embroidery to decorate lightweight silks with new expansive palettes and skillful techniques that imitated the style of the Gu family women (Gu xiu), who famously manipulated values of literati art and late Ming branding to increase their embroidery’s value (Huang 2010). But though the spread of embroidery coincided with the rise of Gu embroidery and was facilitated by its renown, the transition reflected a far more widespread commercialization of embroidery: even as the Gu women produced objects that spread Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands 257

their name, many more women and indeed men in the Jiangnan region and beyond were participating in the formation of local markets, urban guilds, and apprentice-staffed workshops.

Categories of Desire

Whilst the commercialization of embroidery has its roots in the seventeenth century, it was not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that this sector gained momentum. As embroidery became more widely dis- seminated, regional schools of embroidery (si da ming xiu) emerged, and though here I will focus on the Jiangsu region Su xiu embroidery, some of what I will describe also characterizes other well-known regional embroidery centers: Guangdong’s Yue xiu; Sichuan’s Shu xiu; and Hunan’s Xiang xiu.4 Still, it is evident that, at least during the mid-to-late Qing, Su embroidery carried most repute in Chinese domestic markets: Suzhou is extolled in a Qianlong period guild stele inscription as the “Embroidery Market” (xiu shi) (Suzhou lishi bowuguan [1772] 1981, 19). Its pre-eminence in embroidery was nourished by several factors: the presence of the imperial textile workshop; its connection with Gu embroidery, which become sty- listically entwined with Su xiu; the stimulus of the many other producers of handicrafts and popular culture that inhabited Suzhou—popular print producers, wood-carvers, and theatrical troops; its ability to source local materials like the renowned Wu silk, silk thread, gold thread, needles and scissors; and local labor in the form of countrywomen. Most of all, however, Suzhou embroidery was advantaged by the reputation this region held through much of the Qing dynasty as the leader of fashions; all over China the women talked of “imitating” (xue) the Suzhou styles:

Women’s dress is all like [that of] Suzhou, even wearing those short sleeve (jackets) and vests as the latest fashions (shishi) … recently what is considered elegant is those tapestry and embroidery patterns that have gradually become fashionable. The size of the sleeves, the Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 width of the borders, these change with the times, and are certainly lacking any form of regulation (Yang [1774] 1992, 482).

In addition to regional styles, the commercialization of embroidery engen- dered more finely graded socio-economic categories of embroidery, which were utilized by merchants and workshop owners to create additional value through what Sewell, in regard to Lyonnaise silk merchants and weav- ers, terms the “enhancement of consumer desire” (Sewell 2010, 87). Late Qing commercial embroidery shops commonly called their products “Gu embroidery” in an attempt to associate their objects with an aspirational image of educated and elegant Jiangnan gentlewomen like the Gu family, and thus market the ideal of boudoir embroidery (guige xiu), as distinguished from folkier styles (minjian xiu), in order to increase their market Rachel Silberstein 258

worth (even if the workshop objects were often produced by countrywomen). These different classifications point to a significant aspect of commercial embroidery, and this was its ability to serve a wide range of consumers. The Chinese embroidery historian Sun Peilan divides Suzhou embroidery workshops into three sectors: “embroidery workshops” (xiuzhuang ye) which produced objects for imperial and official consumption; “theatrical costume embroiderers” (xiyi juzhuang ye), producing theatrical, religious, and ceremonial items like deity costumes, banner umbrellas, and burial garments; and, at the lowest level in the pecking order, the “accessory embroiderers” or “scissors trade” (lingjian ye), which produced a miscellany of small objects like pillow ends and purses (Sun 1997, 25). Needless to say, the lines between these sectors were permeable. Evidence suggests, for example, that workshops supplying the court used terms of imperial appellation to market their ability to produce objects of a high quality and recent design far beyond imperial arenas (Fan 2008, 480–481). In the face of increasing numbers of producers and objects, consumers used brand names to make their way through a forest of products. Gu Zhentao ([1805‒32] 1999, 351‒352), a late Qing scholar of Suzhou customs, classified different types of Suzhou objects and trades according to whether their names derived from brand names (zhaopai), geographical locale, or craftsmen’s names. Many of the examples he listed were textile accessories: “Jin Fangzhai’s Purses”; “Qing Yunshi’s Collars”; “The Three Pearl Hall’s Fan-bags”; and “Huang Guoben’s Handkerchiefs.” These locations likely supplied a reasonably affluent customer, but there were various marketing means by which professional embroidery was sold: not only in urban shops but also by traveling peddlers and market stalls, with access to the more ordinary consumer, as described in an enthralled listing of objects included in an account of southern courtesans:

Many Suzhou people congregate at Yao Family Alley, Li She Bridge, Peach-leaf Crossing to sell their goods. They sell handkerchiefs, nose taro, wind bonnets, umbrellas, gauze and crepe collars, leather and velvet collars, pearwood clogs, piled platform shoes, perfumed Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 cummerbunds, foreign printed cloth sleeve bands, Gu embroidery patterned sleeve bands, cloud collars, rain clothes, decorative knots, purses, tapestry purses, coral purses, precious stone purses, decorative knot fan cases, tapestry fan cases, coral fan cases, precious stone fan cases, decorative borders, embroidered borders, gold-colored “foreign devil” marten fur-trimmed forehead covers, satin forehead bindings, wigs, dangling adornments, knotted tassels, delicate flower buds, and all those goods that dazzle the eye and captivate the heart. Nine out of ten are boudoir objects, so the glamorous courtesans are very familiar with this place (Penghuasheng [1818] 1914, 28).

The range of qualities and purchasing modes of embroidered accessories suggests that commercialization can be understood as democratizing what Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands 259

had once been courtly and elite consumption of fashion. The accessibility of the embroidered accessory is highlighted in early Republic writer Zhao Ruzhen’s musings upon the scented purse (xiang dai):

During summer days, no matter whether rich or poor, noble or common, people of all works of life, none would be without a scented purse ... Probably at that time if you did not wear a scented purse in summer, then it was as if your clothing was disheveled, and so you would feel uncomfortable, as if you were disrespecting social mores. Therefore most gentry considered a scented purse as exceedingly important, and even lower rungs of society also felt compelled to purchase or make them with care (Zhao [1942‒43] 1970, 9).

Zhao’s account indicates that the market for fashionable goods included not only the established consumers of officials and merchants, but also lower classes—clerks, artisans, shopkeepers, and servants, a social strata also singled out by Fairchilds’ (1993) description of the growth of consumption of “populuxe” goods. Similarly, in his exploration of the growth and reach of luxury consumption in Ming and Qing China, Taiwanese historian Wu Renshu (2005, 51) makes the argument that consumers were not restricted just to the wealthy and established, but also commoners, particularly com- moner women—courtesans, prostitutes, servant girls, and textile workers. It bears emphasizing that the very nature of modular accessories facilitated the humbler consumers’ simulation of elite modes of dress. Embroidered appliques or trimming essentially outsourced the assembly labor to the tailor or home consumer, who could purchase paper sheets of embroidered motifs or roundels, ready to be cut out and appliqued to one’s skirt or jacket. So even if one could not afford a gown finely embroidered with delicate floral roundels, one might be able to purchase a set of eight floral roundels, embroidered in the latest seed stitch style, depicting prunus, lotus, and butterflies worked in bright shades of rose, poppy, and blue, and adhered to paper backing so as to be easily appliqued to one’s gown (Figure 6). In this way, the mid-to-late Qing commercialization of embroidery Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 brought the world of fashionable dress much closer to the ordinary consumer. Democratizing fashion was not necessarily welcomed. Qing consumers used embroidery genres like boudoir embroidery and commercial embroidery to communicate status and identity. In the Dream of Red Chamber, one of the main female characters, the stylish Xifeng, is horrified when her conservative aunt, Lady Wang, accuses her of having bought an erotic purse (“the design embroidered on it consisted not of the usual birds and flowers, but on one side a pair of naked human figures locked in an embrace and on the other some writing”) into the family estate. Her em- barrassment stems not only from the erotic content but also from having such a vulgar object associated with her: “One can see at a glance that it is a poor commercial imitation of ‘Palace’ embroidery. Even the tassels are Rachel Silberstein 260

Figure 6 Paper-backed seed stitch (dazi) embroidered peony roundels; average diameter 22 cm; Royal Ontario Museum, acc No. 962.67.36a‒h. Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands 261

the kind you would buy from the market (shimai huo). I may be young and frivolous but I’d be hardly likely to want a trashy thing like this” (Cao 1985, 1048‒49; Hawkes 1973‒96, 3.459). Historians of Chinese embroidery have tended to share Xifeng’s disdain for commercial embroidery; the genre has received little attention from ei- ther art-historical accounts of boudoir embroidery or anthropological accounts of folk embroidery. Indeed, the connoisseurship-dominated Western museum scholarship of Chinese dress and textiles has largely avoided the idea that textile objects classified as Chinese art may have been produced by a professional workshop. Such commercial relationships run counter to what I term the “trousseau” narrative of Chinese women’s dress, the as- sumption that all Chinese women embroidered their own wardrobes. From the earliest catalogues onwards, we find curators espousing an idealized vision of the Chinese gentlewoman sitting in her courtyard embroidering her trousseau, slowly materializing her virtue through a skilled and leisurely act, as the Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Jean Mailey put it: “We remember that Chinese ladies of rank traditionally embroidered parts of their costumes in their courtyard gardens among their birds and flowers” (1963, 115). Equally, the writings of foreign visitors to China during this period reveal distaste as to the reality behind such romanticized visions of embroidery production:

The Chinese are as famous for their skill in embroidery as for their dexterity in weaving ... The crape shawls, for the manufacture of which the Chinese are so justly famous, are embroidered at the town of Pakkow, in the province of Kwang-tung (Guangdong). I was much surprised on visiting this town to find work so really beautiful, exe- cuted in houses so mean and dirty as are those that form the streets of Pakkow (Gray 1878, 2.230, emphasis added).

Gray’s disconcertedness (how could such an ugly environment produce such beautiful objects?) exposes the gap and overlap between the two senses Francesca Bray defined for nü gong: “womanly work”—a gendered Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 and moral activity producing objects of moral and symbolic value but not monetary value; and “women’s work”—the production of commodities within the market economy and private household economy (1997, 256). Museum scholarship has widely preferred to conceptualize the objects in their collections as emerging from the former style of production, thus contributing to the lack of attention to a domestic commercial market for embroidery. Accordingly, the emphasis I place here on production aims to redress the balance of a Chinese embroidery history traditionally dominated by connoisseurship concerns, instead exploring how the range of production modes enabled a given popular style to be consumed and accessed in different ways, a central feature of fashion. Rachel Silberstein 262

Production Structures

Commercialization enabled the formation of complex producer networks involving a wide range of constituents: spanning workshops, pattern drafters, agents, and rural female embroiderers, but at the apex was the guild. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as producers and consumers increased in number and spread, handicraft guilds were established, collective communities of tailors, hat makers, sock makers, and collar makers. In Suzhou, there were two embroidery guilds: the Jinwen Guild and the Yun- hua embroidery guild, both established in the nineteenth century, but much more is known about the former through an 1884 guild stele stone record that reconstructed its history: first established during the Daoguang period (1821–1850), where a group of embroiderers had made offerings at a temple, towards the end of the century, 65 workshops made donations to build a guildhall (Jiangsu Provincial Museum 1959, 662/39–42). Each workshop do- nated varying sums and the community likely encompassed a range of shops. Some of the bigger workshops might have had vertical structures encompassing each stage of producing an embroidered object—purchasing material, designing patterns, tracing patterns, cutting out pieces, embroidering pieces, assembling and finishing the object, and selling the finished product—but it was far more common for workshops to outsource intermediary stages of this work, in particular the pattern designing and the embroidery itself. Pattern drafting was one of numerous ancilliary industries that profited from the growth in professional embroidery. Producers of other materials necessary for embroidery—gold thread, needles, scissors—also formed branded workshops and guilds during this period (Duan and Zhang 1986, 81, 117). Professional pattern draftsmen were employed by the embroidery workshops to draw and trace the patterns. The English missionary Edwin Joshua Dukes described one in his narrative of a walk along Amoy’s “Fac- ing Kwan-tai’s Temple Street”:

Stop a moment to see what this man is doing as he sits at the door- step ... Seated on a low stool, he has placed on his knees a board Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 upon which is spread a piece of fine linen, and, undisturbed by the busy traffic, he is drawing with a camel’s-hair pencil dipped in Indian ink patterns to be sold to persons skilled in working with colored silks. At the present moment he is tracing a rectilinear Greek pattern for the border of the skirt of a lady’s gown. He uses neither rule nor compass, yet every stroke is produced with mathematical accuracy. Some of the finished pieces are covered with flowers and wreaths, and birds, and human figures, portrayed with a delicacy of touch, which would do credit to a first-class lithographic artist (Dukes 1885, 12–13).

His description implies an independent worker supplying the embroiderer—“sold to persons skilled in working with colored silks”—and perhaps Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands 263

in a less commercially oriented place like Amoy, this relationship prevailed. But back in Suzhou, commercialization seems to have concentrated patterning power in the hands of the workshops, even if a variety of arrange- ments likely existed between workshop, pattern draftsmen, and embroiderer. This is significant in terms of the gendered organization of labor: pattern design was controlled by men—something also apparently true of weaving: the Silk survey found “The art of preparing patterns for the composition of flowers, new designs etc. is a monopoly in the hands of about 200–300 men” ([1881] 1917, 74); pattern designers were also paid more than embroiderers (Silberstein 2014, 119–20). From a fashion perspective, however, it is also noteworthy that locating pattern design in town enabled embroidery workshops to incorporate contemporary design influences, particularly those emerging from the popular print workshops in the Taohuawu area in the northwest of town, close to the address of the Jinwen Guild. A key characteristic of nineteenth-century embroidery is the influence from contemporary visual, material, and performative culture—whether Jingdezhen porcelain, Suzhou ballad narra- tives, or wood-carved patterns (see Silberstein 2014 for examples of each). These iconographic themes reflect the close influence of popular culture upon embroidery producers, something particularly manifest in small embroidered objects like sleeve bands, collars, or purses. Figure 7a shows one particularly interesting example of this cultural interchange: a pair of sleeve bands that utilizes an innovative structure to pair the 12 zodiac animals signs (assigned according to your year of birth and exerting a fundamental influence over one’s personality and life, particularly in identifying com- patibility in potential marriages) with appropriate dramatic scenes. The detail (Figure 7b) shows a snake and Xu Xian, the hero of the romantic play The Tale of the White Snake, who fell in love with snake spirit-beauty Madame Bai. The same combination of zodiac animal and dramatic scene is found in other embroidered examples, for example, one in the Suzhou Embroidery Research Institute (Gao 2010, 414), and it is also found in print culture, in the late Qing Shanghai calendars (Yuefenpai), often created by Suzhou Taohuawu-trained print designers.5 Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 All three examples of this design employ a different pattern with varied choice of figures, who are depicted in different ways and in differing orders; theirs is a relationship of common conception rather than direct imitation. But we see how commercialization enabled professional embroiderers to connect to networks of professionally produced material and visual culture: along with producers of popular prints, professional paintings, carved woodwork, and lacquer, embroiderers participated in an imagery circuit spreading new designs and ideas. Whilst pattern design and sales were mainly located inside the town, for embroidery expertise, the workshops looked to the surrounding suburbs. From the sixteenth century onwards, specialty goods produced by rural market towns had begun to be integrated into the Suzhou economy, small nodes performing different roles in the network of Suzhou’s prosperity Rachel Silberstein 264

Figure 7a Pair of sleeve bands embroidered with motifs of dramatic scenes and zodiac animals, late Qing, Petterson Museum in California (1999.1.1). Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands 265

Figure 7b Detail from sleeve bands showing snake scene from The Tale of the White Snake.

(Duan and Zhang 1986). Numerous towns gained a reputation for embroidery, partly because this was a pursuit easily practiced by women when not engaged in the primary occupation of farming, and hence referred to as “sideline occupation” (fu ye). As the Republic era survey Record of Chi- nese Industry and Commerce described:

Embroidery is a specialty of Suzhou women; folk women especially practice this trade, mostly from farming households in their leisure time from farming, the embroidery shops distribute silks and floss to the embroiderers, (who are found) particularly in Hushuguan, Mudu, Guangfu, and the Xiangshan area. (Shi ye bu guo ji mao yi ju. 1933, 74)

The American writer Hampden du Bose described a vast number of workers Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 engaged in this industry in late nineteenth-century Suzhou: “In and around the city embroidery employs 100,000 women” (du Bose 1899, 33). Such a well-rounded figure bears an air of exaggeration, and it contradicts figures from the Silk survey, which described “no less than 350 families or 1050 working people” engaged in embroidery, though this might only refers to urban workers (Silk [1881] 1917, 75). By the early twentieth century, survey- ors estimated some 10,000 female embroiderers, a figure that highlights the growth of this industry through the early Republic period (Cao 1937, 182). These satellite producers enabled the evolution of the embroidery industry towards increasing local specialization. In part a response to increasing consumer sophistication as to the materiality of embroidery, place and technique were interlaced to develop material nuances spanning the Suzhou countryside. As described by early twentieth-century Suzhou embroiderer Rachel Silberstein 266 Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017

Figure 8 Mapping Countryside Production, based on map by Gao Yuanzai, “Zuijin Suzhou youlan ditu, waicheng” (Recent Touring Map of Suzhou), “Waicheng” (Beyond the City) inset, 1943, in Suzhou gucheng ditu ji.

Zhu Feng and mapped out in Figure 8, goldwork (pingjin) was produced in Hengtang (1), seed stitch (dazi) in Lishu (2); embroidered dragon scales (kelin xiulong) in Xiangjie (3a) and Baima (3b); gauze embroidering (chu- osha) in Soutou outside Feng Gate (4); robes and badges (Paogua puzi) in Shanren Bridge (5); quilts and pillows (beimian, zhentao) in Guangfu (6a), Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands 267

Xihua (6b), and Dongzhu (6c); longevity dress and quilts (shouyi, shoubei) in Xiangshan (7) (Zhu 1982, 134–135). Mudu (8) and Hushuguan (9) were also centers of embroidery. Whilst geo-specialization in weaving had long structured the silk industry, it is not until the nineteenth century that we see the same concept of “regional specialties” applied to embroidery. Notably, the economic and cultural value of the technique or object decreased the further one left the city: the quilts and pillows produced in the farther-off shores of Lake Tai, as opposed to the finer gauze embroidery or goldwork produced closer to the city. In his Republic period survey, Cao Boru also noted that the finer work was produced in town (Cao 1937, 182). This reflected understand- ings of skill as equated with urbanity, but it also underlines the fact that valuable materials like silk fabric and silk thread, distributed by the urban workshops, would have been deliberately kept at a more controllable dis- tance. Cross-culturally, textile production putting-out systems have depended on the domestically sited female, but this arrangement was of particular relevance to China where cultural mores prevented women aspiring to a good name from travelling freely outside the home other than for family visits or seasonal festivals. Connections between these rural workers and urban workshops accordingly relied on the intermediary agent (baotou), who managed the exchange of materials, design instructions, timely com- pletion, and payment. This mediating figure—by the late Qing numbering around 150—decided the best place to take the object according to object type and technique, and negotiated the correct payment for an object (Zhu 1982, 134–135). Early twentieth-century handicraft surveys found that wages were calculated by the square inch, with each unit worth 2–5 yuan—the exact price was determined by the “fineness and skillful technique of the embroidered object” (Cao 1937, 182). As a result of the growth in professional embroidery production, modular accessories appeared in growing quantities in the nineteenth century. The sub-contracting system flourished precisely because it enabled the process of producing embroidered articles to be divided up into separate Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 labor stages of pattern drafting and tracing, piece cutting, embroidering, and assembly. Many kinds of objects could be produced in this way (this period sees the application of embroidery to an astonishingly wide range of objects, encompassing furnishings, clothing, theatrical costume, burial goods), but small accessories were well suited to this kind of production system. It is a productionist account that explains why the sleeve band (huanxiu) style (in which sections of embroidered cream satin fabric, typ- ically forming a separate decorative field to the collar and hem borders, were stitched to the internal lining and then folded back) is little seen pri- or to the mid-Qing. The style flourished during the Tongzhi (1861–1875) and Guangxu (1875–1908) periods, simultaneous to the expansion of the embroidery industry. Similarly the same period saw the rise of coordinat- ing sets of robe collar and hem borders. These were sold as sets of border yardage and numerous late Qing examples survive—entire textile lengths worked in embroidered sections and shaped to fit the collar, bottom and Rachel Silberstein 268

Figure 9 White satin border set embroidered with birds and butterflies; L 74, W 120, Royal Ontario Museum 980.144.

side hems of the ao jacket (Figure 9). We cannot understand the popular- ity of these features in Chinese fashions without acknowledging the role of commercially produced embroidery, for they were grounded upon the production structure of the embroidery industry.

Embroidered Accessories and the Morality of Fashionable Consumption

Each of these accessories is worthy of further study—the cloud collar, scented purse, sleeve band—each one has much to tell us about the changing ways in which women in Chinese society engaged in fashion, and whilst space does not allow for a fuller exploration of these individual items, to conclude this paper I wish to briefly consider the border as an illustration of the didactic discourse surrounding this interaction between expanding Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 production and fashionable consumption. The range of border styles gathers pace throughout the century but seems to have reached its fashion peak sometime around the Tongzhi (1861– 1875) period, a peak evidenced not only in the many extant garments and borders, but also in the nomenclature that multiplied to cover the prolifera- tion of styles: from single borders—“appliqued borders” (xiang), “edging” (gun), “trimming” (huabian), “ribbons” (huataozi), “Dog-tooth piping” (gouya’r), “white banner trimming” (bai qi bian); “peony border” (mudan dai), “gold and white devil edging” (jinbai guizi langan), coiled gold embroidery (panjin jian xiu); to multiple borders‒“Three Borders and Three Pipings” (san xiang san ya), “Three Borders and Three Edgings” (san xiang wu gun), “Five Borders and Five Edgings” (wu xiang wu gun), and even, urban myth had it, “Eighteen Borders and Edgings” (shiba xiang gun). Quantity defined the border aesthetic: the more numerous the borders, the Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands 269

wealthier and more socially prominent the wearer appeared. Hence the ter- minology for multiple border sets, for these suggested that the wearer could afford numerous layers of extravagantly bordered garments, even if, in fact, an extravagant border was all the wearer could really afford. The range of terms demonstrates how Qing fashions were consumed not only through objects but also the words that described the objects, creating the consumer desire central to the consumption of professionally produced embroidery. Still, it is evident from male-penned commentary that many considered the fashion for the border and trimming to be morally repre- hensible. Indeed, as the layers of ornamental edging began to amass in the early nineteenth century, so too did the border’s moralistic ramifications. Whereas for the female consumer the widespread dissemination of these articles created a more attainable forum for fashion; for the male com- mentator their very accessibility was offensive, a trend widely viewed as wasteful, frivolous, and superfluous:

Today the dressmakers (yi gong) in Beijing use from three to five borders on one item of clothing. The cost of this work is several times that of the actual garment, and even children’s clothing is styled like this. This is truly sinful. Rural people have copied this trend—they call it “three circles, five edgings” (san yuan wu gun) … how can such a thing be outlawed? Men enjoy hearing about food whilst women take pleasure in looking at clothes. Once seen it is imprinted on the heart: circle, circle, edging, edging—perhaps their very lives depend upon it. (Li [1850]1982, 42)

Suzhou was considered the epicenter of these extravagant fashions, and Suzhou women provided a fitting figure to personify the luxury and waste of the border:

When it comes to luxurious women’s clothing, none can surpass Suzhou prefecture, their clothing borders are broad, and then they add the “devil borders.” Recently the rather wide ones, like “lotus Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 borders,” “peony borders” and other names, the especially wide ones reach up to 2 inches, and these are called “banner borders,” woven in bright shades and golden threads, they compete in the new and con- tend in the glorious, and are not a bit concerned with workmanship … Where will this luxury end? Is it not a willful waste! (Hu 1883, 61).

Similarly, witness provincial governor Yu Qian’s (1793‒1841) account of Suzhou styles in 1840:

But the cost of borders is even more extreme: there are the so-called “white banner border,” “gold and white devil edgings,” “peony border,” coiled gold embroidery, and other styles, a single jacket or skirt in itself has a fixed price, the cost of the borders at least doubles this, Rachel Silberstein 270

if the jacket constitutes six-tenths (of the price), then the borders occupy four-tenths (Yu [1840] 2010, 35b).

These commentaries expose a number of issues that this article has only been able to touch upon; in particular the underlying moral judgment of that which is basic or necessary in dress, and that which is frivolous or superfluous adornment. A fuller analysis would probe the connections to established conceptions of the moral implications of the clothed female body, for whilst the spread of fashion had long troubled male conservatives (Dauncey 2003), further work is necessary to understand how this traditional didactic discourse responded to the impact of commercial production. Equally, a more complete account would also draw out the implied criticism of the female producer, and the role of gender here. What kind of ten- sions were caused by the gendered imbalance of power in this production system—controlled by men, but predicated upon the labor of women? And though the writers single out the female consumer, is the female producer also implicit in such critiques? Wu Renshu (2005, 54–56) has argued that one of the central drivers of luxury consumption during this period was the growing economic power of female textile workers, citing a number of gazetteer records to evidence how it was precisely the same women engaged in the weaving of textiles and the making of clothes for the market who were subject to criticism for their luxurious clothing consumption. Through producing handicrafts as “side-line” production, women could provide a substantial portion of their families’ income, something that in turn enabled the purchase of small luxuries like an embroidered sleeve band or collar. Though this account highlights the role Qing women played in contributing to household earnings, perhaps the discourse outlined above suggests ways in which this role was hindered, at least in regard to the consumption of fashionable objects. This matters particularly in terms of understanding how conservative male critics sought to control or limit what Sewell terms “the subsumption of desire under capital”: the value added to the object not only through design and marketing, but also the consumer’s knowledge, specifically women’s shopping knowledge and visual expertise, which Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 fueled the fashion system. He observes how merchants profited from the “unpaid, volunteer labor expended by the fashionable consumer whose increasingly assiduous efforts were the condition of possibility for the dy- namism of the fashion system” (Sewell 2010, 103). In this regard, it is striking that the leaders of Chinese women’s fashions were a group possessing little social status or power—the female courtesan. As one late Qing writer puzzled: “The women all follow the Suzhou styles, and Suzhou follows the lead of the courtesan’s styles, and then [ladies from] those official families then imitate these styles, though I cannot understand why this should be” (Ouyang 1984, 79). Many of Suzhou’s brothels were located in the Chang Gate area in the northwest of town, close to where the Jinwen embroidery guild located its guild temple, the popular print workshops, and the route which many of the sub-contracted Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands 271

embroidered objects would have taken on their way out to the suburbs. This image of urban Suzhou oriented around the brothels crowded togeth- er in streets and alleys, is most evocatively described in a bamboo ballad collection penned by late nineteenth-century Suzhou writer Shu Chen (c. nineteenth century):

The road out of Golden Chang Gate lasts for more than one mile, at the entrance to Ning Family Lane the road is winding. Living pitifully in this area of hustle and bustle, three thousand jade green sleeves (seen) amid water dwellings (1860, No. 66, quoted in Suzhou shi wenhua ju 2002, 135).

By locating their workshops there, workshop owners could access the courtesans - the "three thousand jade green sleeves" - who determined the Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017

Figure 10 Lithographic print showing a woman wearing a sleeveless vest bordered with black edgings with cut-out designs, 1890. Wu Youru, Wu Youru huabao. Rachel Silberstein 272

newest fashions. Shu Chen’s rhymes describe how the latest border fashions began and spread:

The “civil and military edging” (wenwu bian) has become more famous than the “Moonlight” (yuehua) style, even cutting brocade pieces into spring flowers. One by one wear these “jian tou” (motifs) as the latest style, from which of the best houses in the Golden Chang area did it come? (1860, No. 93, quoted in Suzhou shi wenhua ju 2002, 138).

He described a new style known as “Civil and Military Edging,” in which the brocade was cut into motifs like bats or fu fortune character and then decorated. As consumers tired of the fashion for layers upon layers of borders, these stark, cut-out designs began to appear, eventually culminating in what was to prove the final act in the border’s development: the wide, black edgings that characterized fashions in late nineteenth-century Shang- hai (Figure 10). Thus we see the evolution of the fashionable modular accessory—a familiar fashion curve from absence to adornment, from excess to elimina- tion.

Conclusion

In this paper I have sought to demonstrate how the commercialization of embroidery and the structure of embroidery production impacted on the evolution of fashion during the mid-late Qing period. Whilst Zhang Ailing puzzled over the apparent lack of purpose in “this amassing of countless little points of interest” ([1943] 2003, 432), it might be said that it was precisely the “dissipation of energy on irrelevant matter” that identified these modular accessories as fashion. Historians have long recognized modu- larity as an essential characteristic of Chinese handicraft production. But the fashion for the modular component carried considerable potential for Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 Qing women, both as producers and consumers. For the often domestically confined Chinese woman, the apportioning of the labor of embroidered modular accessories across producer networks enabled women a means of livelihood that, as Ko observed, has been little acknowledged by historians focusing on “modern factories and missionary schools as venues for women’s liberation” (2009, 42). For the female consumer, the very accessibility of these objects—the fact that borders, collars, and sleeve bands could be easily purchased and easily added or removed—enabled a more widespread popularization and democratization of fashions. Commercial- ization enabled embroidery producers to create denser networks, not only between pattern drafters and embroiderers, but also with other producers of visual and performative media. These networks run counter to the production model conventionally posed in Western embroidery catalogues in Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands 273

which Chinese women embroidered all their dress objects by themselves, deep in the inner chambers and immune to the commercialization and specialization that characterizes Qing handicrafts. This model has obstructed our understanding of the impact of fashion upon late Qing women’s lives, for the commercialization of the embroidery industry and the fashion for the modular accessary ultimately served to connect women with the outside world, whether as consumers or producers, whether through commercial border sets or printed pattern books, and in so doing, opened up fashion as a cultural system.

Acknowledgements

This paper originated as part of the panel “Fashioning Textiles, Fabricating Fashion” at the 2014 Association of Asian Studies conference. I’d like to thank my fellow panellists, particularly the discussant, Dorothy Ko, and my co-organizer, BuYun Chen, for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For references to texts using these terms, see Silberstein (2014, Chap. 2). 2. Cahill dated this album, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2002.602.1–12), to 1750‒1800, and hypothesized it was commis- sioned at court by the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736‒1795) (White 2013, 116–119). Late Ming women’s dress styles did endure into the early Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 Qing but the fact that the album’s male characters are also clothed in late Ming dress suggests that the artist deliberately chose to imbue his work with the historical prestige of late Ming imagery. 3. For an example of a jacket cut from a late eighteenth-century floral satin, but updated with late nineteenth-century trims see Vollmer 2000, 75, No. 65), “Women’s semiformal domestic ao.” 4. The homogenizing nature of this grouping obscures the fact that these four schools flourished in different periods (for example, Xiang xiu only gained its reputation in the late nineteenth century), and their differing interactions with foreign and domestic markets. It also omits other significant local styles like Beijing’sJing xiu or Wenzhou’s Ou xiu. Rachel Silberstein 274

5. Examples date back to 1885, a 1906 example entitled “Chinese and English Zodiac Animal Calendar” (Hua ying shengxiao yuefenpai), based on an 1896 print from a Shanghai print shop, can be found in Wang (1995, 157, No. 89).

References

Belfanti, Carlo Marco. 2008.“Was Fashion a European Invention?”Jour- nal of Global History 3: 419-443. Cao, Boru. 1937. “Fazhan taihu yan’an nongcun fuye de yanjiu [Research on the development of agricultural sideline occupations in the Taihu coastal area].” Shiye Buyue Kan 2 (6): 168-187. Bose, Du. 1899. Hampden, Beautiful Soo: The Capital of Kiangsu. Shang- hai: Kelly & Walsh. Bray, Francesca. 1997. Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press. Breen, T. H. 1993. “The Meaning of Things: Consumption and Ideology in the Eighteenth Century.”In Consumption and the World of Goods, edited by John Brewer and Roy Porter, 249–259. London: Routledge. Cannon, Aubrey. 1998. “The Cultural and Historical Contexts of Fash- ion.”In Consuming Fashion: Adorning the Transnational Body, edited by A. Brydon and S. Niessen, 23–38. Oxford: Berg Press. Chen, Buyun. 2016. “Material Girls: Silk and Self-Fashioning in Tang China (618-907).” Fashion Theory, advance online publication. doi: 10.1080/1362704X.2016.1138679. Dauncey, Sarah. 2003. “Illusions of Grandeur: Perceptions of Status and Wealth in Late-Ming Female Clothing and Ornamentation.” East Asian History 25 (26): 43–68. Duan, Benluo, and Zhang Qifu. 1986. Suzhou shougongye shi [History of Handicraft Industries in Suzhou]. Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe. Dukes, Edwin Joshua. 1885. Everyday Life in China; or, Scenes along River and Road in Fuh-Kien. London: Religious Tract Society. Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 Entwhistle, Joanne. 2000. The Fashioned Body. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fairchilds, Cissie. 1993. “The Production and Marketing of Populuxe Goods in 18th Century Paris” In Consumption and the World of Goods, edited by John Brewer and Roy Porter, 228–248. London: Routledge. Fan, Jinmin. 2008. “Qingdai Suzhou chengshi wenhua fanrong de xiezhao [A portrayal of Qing dynasty Suzhou’s flourishing industry and commerce].” In Guoji Minsheng: Ming Qing Shehui Jingji Yanjiu [The Na- tional Economy and the People’s Livelihoods: Studies in Ming and Qing Society and Economy], edited by Fan Jinmin, 474–520. Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe. Finnane, Antonia. 2008. Changing Clothes in China. New York: Columbia University Press. Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands 275

Gao, Chunming. 2010. Exquisite Fabrics: Traditional Weaving and Em- broidery Patterns in China. New York: Better Link Press. Gray, John Henry. 1878 (1828–90). China: A History of the Laws, Man- ners, and Customs of the People. London: Macmillan and Co. Gu, Zhentao. 1805–1832/1999. Wumen biaoyin [An Account of Con- cealed Things in the Wu region]. Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe. Hamilton, Gary and Chi-kong Lai. 1989. “Consumerism without Capital- ism: Consumption and Brand Names in Late Imperial China.” In The Social Economy Of Consumption, edited by Benjamin Orlove and Hen- ry Ruiz, 253-279. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Hanan, Patrick trans. 2009. Courtesans and Opium: Romantic Illusions of the Fool of Yangzhou. New York: University of Columbia Press. Hawkes David, trans. 1973–1996. The Story of the Stone. New York: Pen- guin Books. Hiner, Susan. 2010. Accessories to Modernity: Fashion and the Feminine in Nineteenth-Century France. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsyl- vania Press. Hu, Shiyu. 1883. Doucun [Preserving Holes]. Nanpi zhang shi. Huang, I-fen. 2010. “Gu xiu xin kao [A New Study of Gu Embroidery].” In Gu xiu guoji xueshu yantaohui lunwenji [Preliminary Proceedings of the International Symposium on Gu embroidery], edited by Shanghai bowuguan, 20–40. Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe. Jiangsu Provincial Museum, ed. 1959. Jiangsu sheng Ming-Qing yilai beike ziliao xuanji [A collection of Jiangsu province Ming and Qing dynasty stone stele records]. Beijing: Sheng huo, du shu, xinzhi sanlian shudian. Ko, Dorothy. 2003. “Bondage in Time: Footbinding and Fashion Theory.” Fashion Theory 1 (1): 3–28. Ko, Dorothy. 2009. “Between the Boudoir and the Global Market: Shen Shou and Suzhou Embroidery at the Turn of the 20th Century.” In Looking Modern: East Asian visual culture from treaty ports to World War II, edited by Jennifer Purtle and Hans Bjarn Thomsen, 38-61. Chi- cago Center for the Art of East Asia, University of Chicago. Li, Guangting. [1795] 1850/1982. Xiangyan jieyi [Country talk and Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 laughs]. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. Lin, Liyue. Sept 1999. “Yisheng yu fengjiao—wan Ming de fushi fengshang yu ‘fuyao’ yilun [Costumes and customs: late Ming clothing trends and the discourse of ‘outrageousness].” Xinshixue 10 (3): 111–157. Lipovetsky, Gilles. 1994. The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern De- mocracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mailey, Jean. 1963. “Ancestors and Tomb Robes.” The Metropolitan Mu- seum of Art Bulletin, New Series 22 (3): 101–115. Mengren Hanshang. 1848/2000. Feng yue meng [Dreams of wind and moon]. Huhehaote: Neimenggu renmin chubanshe. Mingxin, Bao. 2004. Jindai Zhongguo nüzhuang shilu [A Material Record of Modern Chinese Women’s Dress]. Shanghai: Donghua daxue chubanshe. Rachel Silberstein 276

Ouyang, Zhaoxiang. [1837] 1984. Shui chuang chun yi [Spring Murmurs from a Waterside Window]. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. Peilan, Sun. 1997. Wudi cixiu wenhua [Embroidery Culture in Wu Re- gion]. Nanjing: Nanjing daxue chubanshe. Penghuasheng. 1818/1914. “Huafang yu tan [Leftover talk of the painted boats].” In Xiangyan congshu, 18: 69. Record of Chinese Industry and Commerce. 1933. Zhongguo shiye zhi, Jiangsu juan [Jiangsu Province]. Shanghai: Shiyebu guoji maoyi ju. Rowe, William T. 2009. China’s Last Empire: The Great Qing. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Ruzhen Zhao. 1942-3/1970. Guwan zhinan xubian [A sequel to ‘a guide to collectors of antiques’]. Hong Kong: Zhongmei tushu gongsi. Sewell Jr., H. William. 2010. “The Empire of Fashion and the Rise of Cap- italism in Eighteenth Century France.” Past and Present 206: 91-105 Silberstein, Rachel. 2014. “Embroidered Figures: Commerce and Culture in the Late Qing Jiangnan Fashion System.” DPhil diss., University of Oxford. Silberstein, Rachel. 2015. “Eight Scenes of Suzhou: Landscape Embroidery, Urban Courtesans, and Nineteenth-Century Chinese Women’s Fash- ions.” Late Imperial China 36 (1): 1–52. Silk: Replies from the Commissioner. 1881. Shanghai. (China, Maritime Customs II—Special Series: No. 3 reprinted 1917) Suzhou lishi bowuguan, ed. 1981. Ming Qing Suzhou gongshangye beike ji [Collection of Ming and Qing Suzhou Commercial Stele Inscriptions from Ming and Qing Suzhou]. Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, Jiangsu sheng xinhua shudian. Suzhou shi wenhua ju. 2002. Gusu zhuzhici [Bamboo Ballads from Old Suzhou]. Shanghai: Suzhou shi wenhua ju; Baijia chubanshe Vollmer, John, ed. 2000. Clothed to Rule the Universe. Chicago: Art Insti- tute of Chicago. Wang, Shucun. 1995. Zhongguo minjian yishu: Banhua, huihua, cixiu [Chinese folk art: prints, painting, and embroidery]. Hong Kong: Uni- versity Museum and Art Gallery, University of Hong Kong. Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 White, Julia M., ed. 2013. Beauty Revealed: Images of Women in Qing Dynasty Chinese Painting. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wu, Renshu. 1999. “Mingdai pingmin fushi de liuxing fengshang yu shida- fu de fanying [Popular styles of clothing amongst the common people of Ming times, and the reaction of the gentry].” Xinshixue 10 (3): 55–109. Wu, Renshu. 2005. Shechi de nüren: Ming Qing shiqi Jiangnan funü de xiaofei wenhua [Luxurious women: Ming and Qing dynasty Jiangnan women’s consumer culture]. Taipei: Sanmin chubanshe. Xueqin, Cao. 1985. Hong lou meng [Dream of the Red Mansions]. Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe. Yang, Shuben, ed. 1774/1992. Puyuan suozhi [Puyuan Gazetteer]. Nan- jing: Jiangsu guji chubaneshe. Cloud Collars and Sleeve Bands 277

Yanzhen, Sun. 2008. Qingdai nüxing fushi wenhua yanjiu [Research on Qing dynasty Women’s Clothing Culture]. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe. Ye, Mengzhu. 1981. Yue shi bian [Essays on my experiences of the world]. Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe. Yu, Qian. 1840/2010. Mianyizhai xu cun gao [An Extended Edition of the Mianyizhai Manuscript]. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe. Zamperini, Paola. 2001. “Clothes that matter: Fashioning Modernity in Late Qing novels.” Fashion Theory 5 (2): 195–214. Zhang, Ailing (Aileen Chang). 1943/2003. “A Chronicle of Changing Clothes.” Reprinted in Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 11 (2): 427–441. Zhu, Feng. 1982. “Suxiu fazhan jianshi [A Brief History of the Develop- ment of Suzhou Embroidery].” Wenshi ziliao xuanji (Suzhou) (8): 121– 136. Downloaded by [Wagner College] at 18:06 10 September 2017 本文献由“学霸图书馆-文献云下载”收集自网络，仅供学习交流使用。

学霸图书馆（www.xuebalib.com）是一个“整合众多图书馆数据库资源，

提供一站式文献检索和下载服务”的24 小时在线不限IP 图书馆。图书馆致力于便利、促进学习与科研，提供最强文献下载服务。

图书馆导航：

图书馆首页文献云下载图书馆入口外文数据库大全疑难文献辅助工具